The warmest 19 April since 1772

Figure 1

I was keen to publish the fact that Thursday – the 19th of April – had been the warmest for that day since 1772 in Central England, but because there’s be an ongoing communications or observational problem down at the Met Office, I was delayed till the CET data for Thursday finally arrived this morning.

The 19th also set an extreme maximum record (23.0°C) as well as a new highest mean of 16.4°C, which was 7.95°C above the 1961-1990 long-term average, and a full 1°C higher than the previous high set in 1870.

Extreme records like this don’t happen that often, but in my experience when they do you often get a pair, as was the case with the 18th and 19th of this month. These values are of course provisional but I doubt if they’ll change much.

There may be a chance that the 20th has also set a new extreme to make it three in a row, but because of the data problem I won’t know that till tomorrow at the earliest. Don’t forget you can keep up with the latest daily CET on my Meteograph website.